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Mad all Her Days.
By MRS. AMELIA V. PURDY.
Six months after Camber’s introduction to the
Deane’s, he had quietly informed Vale that all
that was necessary to restore, her mother’s vis
ion was an operation, and offered to take her to
Philadelphia, staking his professional reputa
tion on the issue. He was considered atuor-
oughly educated physician although he had
never practiced medicine. Mrs. Deane had en
thusiastically embraced the opportunity. 'You
he had said to Yale, ‘have one great fault, you
are too proud and lay too much stress on inde
pendence. Child the only people who are really
independent are the people the sods of the
church-yard cover; but I will let you pay me,
since it hurts you so and usurious interest too.
I will be a very Shylock in exaction till the last
dollar is paid ‘as you like,’ but the experiment
must be made. There i3 no affliction like blind
ness and when your mother returns, seeing as
well as we can see, we will have a big supper
and jubilee.' So one day the cars pulled out of
the city and Mrs. Dean and Bertie, and a nurse
and Camber went in it; and nightly afterward
the sisters pray that God may signally bless the
efforts of the occnlist. Then there is a suspense
and the letter carrier goes by, then a. day or two
of anxiety and then a hack stops at the door and
Mrs. Deane jumps'out and rushes by her oldest
daughter, who leans back with a fervent thank
God on her lips, and on to fall laughing and
crying, on her knees by Pearl’s chair, and
when she grows composed, she tells how Mr.
Camber took the bandage from her eyes and
said, looking so noble and handsome she had
loved him r n the spot, ‘I welcome you back to
the daylight dear Madam: thi3 is the proudest
day of my life.’
When the short, sweet day was over Camber
had come and altogether there was no happier
family anywhere. When he rose to go, he put
his bands softly on the silken curls of his pet
and said ‘Titania, it I could only have you
cured.’
She laughs. ‘Don’t grieve about me, God will
straighten pe after awhile. I am happier than
many a child who can walk, and I get around
nicely on my rollers, and now that mamma can
see. why my happiness is increased ten fold.
Dear friend, wealth will Dot do everything’
It is five years now, since Salome stood in her
white glory of pearl silk, lace, diamonds and
pearls and gave hbr hand for ‘better for worse’
into her husband’s keeping. In all these years
he had been tender, considerate, unselfish, a
model citizen and a model husband and yet, as
it is utterly impossible to wholly cloak a cor
rupt nature in this most intimate of all relations
—for the mother does not know her son as his
wife knows him, she could no longer deceive
herse'f; Mr. Horton did not understand the first
principles of honor, or the enormity cf the de
viations irom truth and right. A woman of
deeper mentality would, after the like amount
of laborious research, have arrived at the con
clusion that it is as ridiculous to expect high
sense of rectitude from half the people around
us, es to expect them to produce a Hamlet or
Paradise Lost. Moral idiocy being almost epi
demic amongst us, natural liars and natural
thieves too numerous to mention. People, sin
ning, not from choice but because they are not
able to distinguish between right and wrong:
minds of infant development in adult bodies
write Wrong the north pole of the mental com
pass towards which the needle of inclination un
erringly points. Salome made the mistake,
qnired habit WMCii otfUVu be .lit
tle effort. A woman cast in a coarser mould
would not have grieved at all so long as lie gave
her lull meed of love. It killed her happiness.
She had thought him the incarnation of honor,
she had thought that his word was his bond,
that he was above equivocation, mental reserva
tions and trickery, and finding he was not, it took
the color and spice from life’s rose and gladness
from her eyes. God help the wife who knows
in her heart cf hearts that her husband is as ab
ject in soul and body as any lizard that orawls
in the green dusks and who loving the comforts
he gives her, stays with him sharing his ill got
ten gains to the hitter end, for,her daily drink
is bitterness and heaviness of spirit.
‘ If Mrs. Horton is a happy woman she has a
strange way of showing it,’ commented shrewd
lips. ‘But they often starve with too much, as
they who have too little.’
‘Any woman who is happy shows it in her
eyes,’ said another. ‘ Stuff! ’ growled Diogenes
‘ Only children and young ladies have glad eyes
— a teething baby will take all the gladness out
of the married woman’s eyes who has not a care
beside, but the women who have not a trouble
but this are as scarce as Koh-i-nors.’
If we have trouble so long as we have eyes and
features, they will proclaim it, let our lips be
silent as the dead, and friends and neighbors
who would not dare to question us, will read
the language of the face, that, alas for us, is not
Coptic or Syriac, and speculate upon the skele
ton we think is securely hidden. There is no
unknown skeleton anywhere. Who has a skele
ton in his life, being human cannot conceal it,
though he may veil it Irom the general gaze
and the casual visitor.
Softly as we glide from one year into another
the prosperous years passed. A little girl comes
and stays a little while and goes home. Another
child is born and makes quite a lengthy visit,
but when the flowers of his third year open, he
closes his laagning love-lit, indigo eyes and
goes away to play with his sister in the daisied
meadows of the land of love.
From this woman, unhappy in the midst of
oriental splendor, we turn to our humble
friends—the Dean’s. Vale is now proprietor of
a larger establishment on a fashionable street.
Daisy had graduated at sixteen and liad royally
fulfilled expectation. In all the city there was
no girl so flawlessly beautiful. In a fit of pen
itence towards his sworn ally and friend dating
back to a period when both wore dresses, Cam
ber had introduced Hardwicke, and that blase
gentleman had become fascinated with the slen
der, southern brunette, with proud eyes, lumi
nous as stars, and complexion creamy as the
white belles of the hyacinth, and after a short
courtship he had married her, and the indolent
gentleman is iaolatrously fond of his beautiful
wife whose impressive grace makes her the cyn
osure of all eyes. Just now, the Dean house
hold is under a cloud and Mrs. Dean goes about
with a sad face aud Yale steals away ever and
anon, to give way to a paroxsym of grief that
sickens her for days.
Pearl, who looks more like one of God’s
angels than a mortal woman, has reached the
limit of her days. They have fought this bitter
truth away with Herculean will, but they can
do so no longer. How resolute we are not to
believe that our idols must be taken and how
we pray, half mad with eyes blinded with tears
that God wifi again peiform a miracle and
restore the body sometimes a third decayed.
Oh this weary old world and its anguish that
fills dark hair with silver, and makes hearts,
young in years, dry as summer dust! She
d#e8 not seem to suffer, but she is too feeble to
dirve around the green hills. Too tired to even
talk or read. Never complaining, always
patient even when the exertion of breathing
‘Only tired’ she would say smiling. ’Mr.
Camber, mama and Vale and you and I will have
a long ride over the hills to-morrow.’
But the to-morrow never came, and her
strength daily decreased. She was no larger at
nineteen than a child of nine, and the little
body was fearfully twisted and shrunken, but
the exquisite beauty of the face, had increased
if possible with the lapse of years. One day she
is too tired to get up and asks for Mr. Camber
repeatedly. He comes, to break down like a wo
man, for the delicate face is white with the
frosts of death. He lifts her in his arms aDd
she nestles her head on his breast with the rest
ful ‘now’ of her infantile days. Around her kneel
the agonized mother and sisters and Bertie in
the very abandon of sorrow lies on the floor
writhing and sobbing.
‘I am easier now’ she says in a low clear tone.
‘Mama I’ll tell papa that you cau see. I don’t
think his mind would have gone out altogether,
only you went blind. Mr. Camber ^remember
my Vale. Now kiss me all good bye. It will
be so sweet To walk and to be free from pain.’
She roused, ‘Why there’s papa! Mama don’t
you see him (’
‘Just as ] am without one plea
But that thy blood was shod for me
And that thou hld’st me come to thee
Oh Lamb Of God I come.
The sweet voice faltered through the words of
the dearly loved hymn, then the daintily pure
mouth closed, she extended her arms and the
angel that had been hovering in the room all
day, stooped and lifted her soul and bore it
through Rpaee and the glittering stars to God.
This blow fell with crushing weight upon Mrs.
Deane and Vale, and had she been his own
daughter, Camber could not have taken it hard
er. People marveled at their sorrow. They
had known that her death was only a question
cf time for years, and should have been prepar
ed. As if the heart could ever be prepared to
surrender its idols. Death punishes the living
terribly, let it come when it may, unexpected
ly or waited for for dreary months; w,e are just
as ready to receive it in the erne case as in the
other. Her life and death < ft'eoted Camber as
the finest sermon the genius of man could pro
duce would not, and when he stood over‘her
lying in her casket, under a shower of white hy
acinths—her favorite flower—he resolved to
spare no effort to become a participator in the
Christianity that had made her, through the
hardest of physical suffering, holy as the angels
that sing around the throne, aud that bad glad
dened and lightened her days and made sweeta
pilgrimage, that lacking this, would have been
intolerable. He saw the practicable applica
tion of Christianity, and that it lightened and
decreased the burdens of life, and strengthen
ed and inspirited. He saw that without it, life
was a rose without odor; that who possessed it—
was rich indeed, and with an assured future that
robbed death of all its bitterness.
Generally, death impresses people for a time,
but with Camber tli9 effect was permanent, and
the following Sunday the services of the church
possessed a rarer aud deeper beauty. ‘What is a
woman without religion?' is an old saying and
true enough; but we say a man without practical
piety, is the most abject creature that walks on
God’s earth, and trust that Camber may attain
the purity and holiness of heart he is earnestly
seeking.
CHAPTER V.
‘I want sister Vale to break up business and
come home and live with us,’ said Hardwicke af
ter the funeral. ‘There’s no sense in her keep
ing this shop Camber!’ very discontentedly.
Can’t you persuade her that it is time for her to
quit work and rest. Tell her that I'll spare no
pains to make her happy. She’s going to stay
here and mope and grieve herself to death after
Pearl. She’s almost a shadow now.' .
Camber used ali his persuasive powers andjail-
ilyi ‘or I will be- ill'. I must occupy my time
so as to leave no time for thought. It is neces
sary, evtn for those who have never committed
a. crime, to sometimes get quite away from self.
Introspection is the one thing I must avoid; I
must keep back thought aud step forward. Labor
is the true Lethe. I am obliged to Mr Hard
wicke but I must not accept his offer. If I did
I would die inside of a year.’
‘Tou have never taken a buggy ride with me
yet, he observes, ‘Miss Vale let me take you out
ou the hills, it will do you good; I did not know
anything could so utterly change you, I thought
you so strong. Will you go ?’
She shakes her head, mindful of the compact
made years before.
‘Why,’he demands pettishly.
‘It I went with you the people would say we
were engaged, and I do not wish our names con
nected in that way.
He misunderstands her and colors hotly. ‘You
would not be seen in public with the prodigal;
you would feel it a degradation to have our
names connected,’ he says, in a hurt, grieved
tone. ‘Miss Vale you are hard on mo.’
He goes away moodily and Vale falls down on
the bed and moans, ‘Oh, my love! my love!
Thank God he does not see it, Rather than have
him know I would take Bertie and put thous
ands of miles between us. I would almost give
my soul for one caressing word, and he wulks
daily by the house that shrines the woman whom
he loves with mad idolatry, and who is the wife
of another man.’ Her mind reverted to Pearl’s
prophecy when, under the strong necessity of
having someone to confide in, she had c'arried
her trouble, her intolerable cross to her little
sister and was comforted. It shocked her to
learn that the child had known it for years and
had been too delicate to refer to it, while giving
her a rich meed of sympathy. Again, and with
the voice of conviction Pearl had made her
prophecy. ‘He will turn to you at last,’ she had
said, ‘glad to receive and return the purest love
he has ever known. He will love you as you de
serve to be loved, and in his love you will be
purely happy, but you must wait till this infat
uation dies, and it must not humiliate you, for
she is something more than a mere woman, and
being this she will be unfortunate.’
i rom these fits of depression she would rally
ana take up her cioss, ashamed that her steps
had faRered, humiliated that she had fallen from
»-6r perch with broken wing, and resolute to
maxe no further moan, let the nettles sting as
they would.
It is ’57. and the country is on the verge of a
panic.. Heads oi families look aghast, merchants
diminish their clercical forces and expenses and
thousands are out of employment. Mr. Ho rton
jokes and smiles no longer but looks serious and
preoccupied. One day Salome is driving home
and stops to enquire why the streets are throng-
A man on the pave enlightens her. ‘There’s
have incited the meabout him to murder. Sa
lome leans back, gbtly—her great eyes dilated
with horror. The pits stand still, though she
has dropped the rei from her icy fingers. A
gentleman quietly t;e| hie seat beside her and
says:
‘I will take you hie, Mrs. Horton; this is no
place for you,’ and turns the Shetland^ down
a side street.
‘The people arrives, ’ he sayB bitterly.
•They will eat yourjjbd and rend yon. Many
of his pensioners a there, many men whom he
has helped. My Gyy?ho would be a banker!
I’d rather clean stfrs than put my character
into the hands of tl abble, or be under obliga
tions to the scurf f<«ne capital of my business.’
H ! s remarks are ^ reverse of consoling.
‘Whom does he ie,?’ she asks. ‘How came
he to put his good ime into the power of a mob
like that to blast f'aver. I don’t understand.
He did not acquanme with his business, and
I seldom went to fe office.’
He looks at her tvingly, It is Camber, and
loving her beyondU created things, his sorrow
is only a little lessieavy than it was when he
stood over the deaipearl.
‘These people arbis depositors,’ he said gen-
tly.
‘I know,’ she shiirs like one in an ague, ‘but
I did not know th‘ bankers ever risked the
people’s deposits;t seems to me the holiest
trust—to tako the ird earnings cf the poor.’
‘A man may be fhjyaest as daylight in this,’
Camber answers q€kly. ‘Horton is considered
the safest banker ithe city; the failure of the
Ellis bank has broj him. He took no person
al risks I’ll guaraiad.’
He helped the nserable woman out of the
phaeton, saw her ithin doors aud for her sake
went bahk. Whoi all assailed, he defended.
When he heard tli.lue and cry he rescued the
hunted man. Tine was nothing in life so hor
rible to him as to fe men hounding each when
down. He got upon the awning and called
out:
‘Whom do you vint to hang, wolves and un
grateful curg ! the an who feasted and fed you,
who found situatios for you, whose wife spent
her days among tb destitute and the distressed
whose doors alway stood open to the needy?
why don’t you hav patienoe and wait? He mer
its better treatmen at your hands than this. I
have never know] him to engage in foolish
speculations. Yo. need not hiss, I am not
afraid of a millions wards who cringe to a man
in his prosperity ait stone him when he's down—
when the dark day set in.’
A pistol is disaarged at him. His dark,
handsome face oeur falters, then goes up the
cry: ,
‘You have lost nothing.
‘If it be true,’ Jfe calls back, ‘ha loses all.
What are your paltry dollars to a man’s reputa
tion? The man ym worshiped yesterday will
be a thii-f to-day, ad his loans will be magni
fied by the carrioncrow of slknder till he looms
into view the Titai scoundrel of tho age, and
he will be poor toi, beggared. With most of you
the sum you have lost will not abridge one com
fort. Your clothiig will be as good, your table
as gfeod, your hon.-e as comfortable as though
you had not lo«£-,«jj.r deposit. He will have
nothing, not even i good name !’
He spoke in vaiL; he plead with fools and
madmen. Call us in enlightened people when
scenes like this assc.of daily occurrence! Nor will
the day ever dawrlthat the savage element will
be extinguished ilmaa, while money is made
and lost. Thinkjpvhat this world would be if
its inhabitants' worshiped not mammon. In
prosperity as in adversity a man shows his real
nature. In the one as in the other he will be a
simpleton or sage, leep or shallow; only in the
« My father and mother in heaven.’ she said
huskily, • would not receive me if I acted dis
honestly.’ They had died soon after her mar
riage. ‘I will keep nothing that will bring a
dollar while yon owe one man.’
‘ So my labor goes for nothing all these years,’
he interrupted. ‘ With money a man can make
money and when I make it I will pay these peo
ple. If you persist in giving up what is right
fully your own—heirlooms too, over which they
could not have a shadow of claim, you are a fit
candidate for bedlam.’
‘I must raise money some way to pay. Mr.
Sprague and Mr. Hume and Mr. Morton,’ she
answered. ‘Morton came here crying like a
baby for fifteen hundred dollars.’
‘ Did be tell yon that he fired twice at me , ’
Horton demanded, * and that I took the pistol
out of his hand and boxed his ears for him and
shoved him ont doors.’
She paled and caught at a ohair to keep from
falling.
‘ Y'es,’ he went on, ‘they came with knives and
revolvers aud big sticks and tongues fouler than
any Billingsgate fish women, trying to scare me,
and, I noticed the smaller the deposit lo3t, the
greater the wrath, and you wonld beggar your
self and me to pay men who would murder me.
You have singular notions of right and wrong.’
‘They are crazy,’ she says brokenly. ‘They
know not what they do. Whore was the capital
of your business, that you did not use it, and
keep your good name out of the power of men
to blast forever.’ •
He made no reply and the determined woman
ppt bronze and furniture on the market, and
when the sale was over, she had obtained from
Horton the names of a few creditors whom their
losses would seriously cripple and these she
discharged herself calling at their homes for
'that purpose, sarcastically reminded now and
then by Horton that it was as much a sin to be
unjust to self as it was to be unjust to his neigh
bors and hurt to the quick that he did not co
operate with her in her disagreeable work.
One day, Vale came out of her sitting room
and passed behind the counter.
‘ I do not wish to purchase,’ said the lady who
had just entered the store. ‘I wish to see you
on business. I am Mrs. Horton.’
Vale led the way to the back room she bad just
quitted with a sympathetic face. Salome saw it
in the true eyes and felt it in the cheery voice,
and to the day of her death loved the woman
before her.
‘ I believe you had deposited with my hus
band two thousand dollars, Miss Dean?’
‘Y r 63, one must meet with all sorts of losses
is life’ is the unexpected answer.
‘ Being a woman,’ Salome replies, ‘the loss did
not send you howling ont ou the streots, with
kuife and revolver, clamoring for blood. Men
are always our superiors, taka them where you
will.’
Vale laughs and repeats;
‘Always our superior, Mrs. Horton, I bear it
in mind and try to be humble. It is good in
them to breathe the same air we do.’
‘Lofty beings,’ Mrs. Horton goes on, quite
sick of herself and of the whole world. ‘ I am
afraid we are not sufficiently grateful to them
for the priceless blessing of their society and
the honor of bearing their names.’
She has the crowd at the bank in her mind’s
eye now, but not a bit of sorrow for herself de
spoiled of all that was beautiful and rendered
necessary to existence by long habit.
‘I came here to pay you the money you
thought was lost. I obtained it by selling pearls
that had been in our family for hundreds of
yoars, that my mother wore on her weddiag day,
that I wore on mine.’ She went on. • I tell
who would
ed.
been a run on the banks and the big houses of
Denton and Horton have ‘busted.’
Just then a vast qjowd surges up the street,
not orying a la lanter! aristi va! but the faces are
white with fu^y and their eyes are full of men
ace. Among them can be distinguished the ges
ticulating and frantic foreign element, with the
keen thirst for blood when the tiger in the heart
rouses. She turns deathly white and drives af
ter the crowd that goes on and on till it stops
bt fore her husband’s bank. The police are in
lull force and breast back the cursing, swearing
people with their batons. Up the street is borne
the hoarse cry of another mad multitude at the
Denton bank. Women too are there, without
bonnets, and crying, and buffeted about by wild
men, who are conscious only that the money
they had saved is lost. A wild-looking German
is haranguing the crowd and urging them to
break into the bank and take summary venge
ance on the rascals who had rained them. °A‘
policeman forces his way through the crowd and
leads off the man wiio, in a moment more, would
passed
the last the poorer depositors were the first to be
paid. Meanwhile shader flitted hourly through
the streets and the broken-hearted widow and
the orphan depositors who had lost their all
were paraded forth for sympathy with many
oaths and gesticulations. Wherever a banker
fails, this mythical widow and weeping orphan
is produced with fiae effect. It occurs to the
frenzied people, that in the time when so many
are losing money it will not do to slight the
class over whom the dear Christ and his apos
tles were particularly tender. It is true they
are in our midst daily and no one notices their
presence particularly, but when the popular
mind is feeling tnrough its pockets and insen
sibility has doffed her crown, to bring the wid
ow and orphan in, and make capital of them, is
the very thing to do. Those who have not lost
a dollar will, hearing this, turn out with one
accord to hiss and to stone—it is always the
stone-age with the majority of oar people.
For three days busy tellers pay over the coun
ters and then the bank is closed'and for the first
time since the run commenced Horton goes
home. He has aged ten years in that time. The
ruddy hue of his complexion is gone. He has
lived without eating or sleeping. He cares not
a whit for the trust he has betrayed, that six
hundred thousand.dollars of the people’s money
has been destroyed. He grieves for the power
that has passed out of his hands, for the crown
and the throne his no longer. For him who had
been first, to pass now to the rear is intolerable
a g on y- I Q the teiqple of life he would die before
he would sit in a back seat. Born to command,
he commanded in the school yard when a child
ol five. Show me a school yard and I’ll tell you
what sort of men and women the playing chil
dren will make. A weaker man will in the first
plunge fjom the tu'even of prosperity to the hell
ot failure have thought madly of suicide. He
shut his teeth Lard aud said:
‘I will climb again. I will not stay down. I
will work and scheme as I never worked and
schemed before.’
He looked out at the bitter multitude. ‘Who
values your censure or praise ! Five years from
now ye will ortfwl and cringe again.’
Even the gross ingratitude of the men he had
assisted, pained him not at all. He smiled at
it and thought it natural and forgot it in the
greater suffering of almost irreparable loss. His
wifd met him without tears. There was brave
blood in her veins and too much romance in
her; moreover she knew not the definition of
poverty. Till she went among the poor as a phi
lanthropist she did not know how they lived.
Observation is a fine teacher but experience is
the better, and having only had experience
of the pleasant ways of life she was searcely
to be blamed that her grief was altogether
for the good name now nnder a cloud, but
she put into his hands all the valuables
she possessed. The pearls like linnet eggs
that had been in her family* for twelve gen
erations, the priceless lace dresses and flowers
ana the bridal diamonds she had worn but a
halt dozen times. He flung them all down with
on awful cry of anguish, and grovelled on the
floor. She knelt beside him and pillowed his
hot, half-crazed head (there was not among his
depositors one breast as heavy, one head as pain
ful) on her lap and sought to soothe him. She
failed as might have been expected. She prof
fered the wrong kind of consolation. He had
hoped that worldly wisdom would have prompt
ed her to hold on to the stately mansion and all
it contained and which no process of law could
touch. Having so much secured,he could bank
rupt his outstanding debts and have a fair sum
to staitauew with. She would give up all and
beggsr herself to pay people who abased and
slandered him. He reasoned and plead with
her that what she would raise would be but a
drop in the bucket—but he plead in vain, she
was resolute.
of trouble—therefore am more experienced. If I
can assist you in any way it will give me pleas
ure, but you can have no scarcity of friends.’
‘I haven’t one,’ Salome says quickly and
breaking quite down, ‘some stay away fearing
to intrude; among the rich I was never a favor
ite.’ She looked up piteously. ‘I hated deceit
aud I had no policy: what was weak and con
temptible I ridiculed, and since I have nothing
more to give, the poor have deserted me.’
Vale called one of the girls and bade her mind
the store.
; I am going with you and we will get through
this business as soon as possible. You are utter
ly prostrated and ought to be in bed and I will
go heme with you and stay all day if you would
like me to. I will take the money you offer me,
but dear, men sometimes have a dreary struggle
after they fail: sometimes, never succeed. I know
more about the world than you dojifMr. Horton
is one of these will you come to me and get
this money ?. It is the price of your mother’s
bridal pearls, and I will take it on no other
terms. ’
is a black-hearted woman indeed
add one straw’s weight to tha$rouble that is cra
zing her. There’s many a Nero, who will n
bo execrated for hundreds of years, till we -
gin to have a compassionate .pity for
mada unutterably detestable for centuries, while
the many go unwhipped by justice down to their
graves, and so women told her of ‘breaches c
trust,’ and 'promises violated,’ and asked her to
please set them right, about this operation -hey
are satisfied was wrongly related, and ot that
transaction, that had the strong flivor of ras
cality, conscious all the while that they were
torturing ap Torqueamada never did down in
his subterranean dungeons, for Toiqueamada
never professed a tender feeling for the people
he put upon the rack. She went to her hus
band with these stories, and when the truth was
not politic, he softened their angularities with
ingenious sophistries, vulgarly called lies, but
unfortunately for him, and for all who attempt
it, who do not possess superhuman cunning,
the stories did not corroborate, and to-day con-
tradieted yesterday, and this story that. Her
eyes opened suddenly and this business UDrolls
like a scroll before her. She knows now that
the capital of the bauk had been a myth, ana
that the gigantic superstructure, the pride of
the city, had been keptmp by the shrewdest of
financiers, and by the deposits of the people.
Finding it impossible to deceive her any long
er, he flung aside his cloak and made tree con-
fession, and trusted to her love to hold her. She
heard that the ‘breach of trust’ was but a nttie
pleasantry and did not impart any degradation
nor was it amenable to tbe law. The legal
frauds were unveiled before her wondering eyes
and they were legion. .
‘It is exposure that makes the infamy, he
said one day. ‘Failure is worse than a blun
der; it is a crime; what have I done that has not
been done a thousand times a year oyer ihe
earth ? I never did so mean, so utterly con-
tern ptable a trick as those men did who got up
that ‘Cave stock Co.’ If the coal had been as
good as the Prospectus it would have been a
fine thing. I know of one man who took that
stock in payment of a debt, from the mao who
broke him, and released him from all indebted
ness, who would nbt have touched it at all ODly
for the good names upon it, men ot wealth and
financial integrity, who stand high in the land,
who, had it prospered, would have gladly shar
ed in tbe profits for loaning their names and
influence, but a3 it came to gritf, washed tueir
hands in innocence ot the whole swindle, while
the victimizer goe3 scot tree. A entrusted B with
twelve hundred dollars to pay to C. ihe war
breaks out, B uses the money and there is no
correspondence between tbe hostile sections. A
is South aud meets C who demands his money.
A suggests that he needs a* little close confine
ment, C resents thejokeand persists, A explains
and C in a white fury goes to B—who pa; s him
and other redress has he not, and people think
him lucky to get it. at all. No man in business
who makes money rapidly makes it honorably,
and in a town ot delrauders the defaulter who
is exposed gets not one word ol sympathy.
‘I wonder how you can ever find jurymen’ she
ictenupts. ‘With what degree of consistency
can a man find a bill against another for what
he is guilty of himself, and how can a corrupt
judge sit in judgement on the cx’imes be has
committed himself.’
He laughs at her simplicity and genuine dis
gust for the ‘ways that are dark,’ hoping by de
grees to familiarize her with wrong-doing and to
gradually undermine her conscientious scruples.
He has obtained a lucrative position in a large
dry goods house, and with the determination to
make money, has dismissed the olden business
from his mind.
■You can’t keep a man like Horton down,’ said
a looker on, who admired his indomitable pluck,
you this to prove to you that I have a desire to
act honorably so far as I cud, with the people
v : Vrtt'i'Jfl JBX husband.' , , ,
‘and/if I can help you l Via a r S ew fl vt°cnm f fo S torta^
old* than you are aud I have had a great deal aud the Horton smash up ceases to be discussed.
The poor wife has no god on her altar now but
the God iD the heavens, but duty binds her in
its heavy chains and she drags them around
clanking at her feet-
(T0 BE CONTINUED.)
She is dead in earnest and Salome promises,
after which Vale brings hpr a cup of coffee and
makes her drink it, and goes away with her,
and a half dozen dipositors’ heavy hearts are as
light as down when they drive away. As they
go homoward Mrs. Hardwiche passes them driv
ing the dainty shutlands that Salome loved
more than any thing she had parted with. Vale
frowns at her as Salome drops hack, white and
sick in her seat, and Daisy gazes wonderiugly
at her sister and her ghastly companion, and
seeing her husband at a little distance beckons
to him and he comes.
‘Whois that with Vale?’ she asks.
‘Mrs. Horton,’ he returns, ‘You did not drive
by them, did you ?’
‘Yes.’ Her beautiful face clouds and her
eyes fill. ‘Ferd, I am so sorry. I did not know
her; I would have gone five miles out cf my way
rather than drive these ponies by her.’
‘Your errors will always be of the head and
not of the heart,’he says, proudly. ‘There don’t
cry, you great baby.’
‘I can t help it,’ she replies, ‘I feel so sorry
for her, and Vale says we never know the day
or the hour, when such trouble may overtake
us. When she found her deposit was lost, what
did she do? If she had been a great bulking
man, she would have gone out to kill or whip,
with foul oaths on her lips, taking God’s name
in vain, and acting like an idiot; being a wo
man, she takes a ‘good cry,' though really I nev
er did see the good in any cry, and drops it,
and lo! she is out on some erraud of mercy with
the woman who has much more reason to cry
than any woman I know of.’
Hardwicke laughs.
•The women of your house are not men-wor-
shipers, that is evident. For men as men I
think you and Vale have the purest contempt.
You must not give credence to half you hear in
regard to Horton. Even Camber, who has al
ways distrusted him, says that in a time like
this, peoples’ inventive genius is remarkable.’
‘If it should happen to jou, I'd die.’ fc>he
looks at him drearily through her tears.
‘I am not in business,’ he answers. ‘So you
need have no fears. Good-bye! don't cry aDy
more, darling, you’ll spoil your eyes.’ And wife
and husband separated.
Vale remained with Mrs. Horton all day, and
the friendship thus commenced lasted till death.
‘His love sanctifies her to me,’ Bhe said softly,
as she went home in the gloaming. ‘Any thing
in the world that he loves would be dear to me,
and when my compensation comes, I wiil be
more than repaid, when from the great, wide
.world of women he chooses me. I shall be roy
ally repaid for the silence and dumb endurance
of years. Will any one be cruel enough to tell
her these stories afloat about her husband ? She
Edison’s Latest Invention
Yesterday, a strange man, carrying what ap
peared to be a small coffiu, paused in front of
the Oil Exchange. He was a sad faced man aud
his black suit glistened in the sun-light like
an armor. He put down hi3 strange burden,
and bowed to the men standing around. Then
casting his eyes up at tho building, he began:
•Gentlemen, I congratulate yon. You have
reared here a structure which is second to none
in the country. When you shall have gone to
that bourne from whence no traveler returns,’
and he glanced sorrowfully at the little coffin,
‘this beautiful bnilding will remain a monu
ment to your energy and enterprise,
‘But, gentlemen, poor as I may seem, great
as the contrast is between us, I have that in
this little box before me,’ and he tipped the
coffin reverently with his cane, ‘which I would
not exchange for all the wealth of your oil re
gions. It’is, gentlemen,’ and he fcegan to un
screw the lid, while the crowd involuntarily
shrank back; ‘it is, gentlemen, a rat trap which
lam introducing for Mr. Edison, of Monro Park.’
The crowd closed up again.
‘It is hi3 latest and, as he says himself, his
best. I have handled a great many rat traps in
my life, and I can safely say that this one knocks
tae socks off all ot them. Don’t crowd up too
close till I show it to you.’ aud he took off the
top and exposed a box with a lot of apartments
communicating with each other by little doors,
windows and openings ot one kind and another.’
The great inventor named this the ‘Citizen’s
Savmg’s Rat-trap,’ because it operates on the
same principle as a savings bank.
‘You see, the rats smells the cheese and enters
by the front doors,’ and the trap-man indicated
the aparture with his cane; ‘thence in quest of
the.cheese, which is a sort of ignis fatuus, through
this door, which admits him to parlor A, or the
cashier’s room.. This door closes behind him,
and he passes thence to parlor B, or the direct
or's room; this door closes behind him as before
and he proceeds to parlor C, or the president's
priyate apartment. By an ingenious arrange
ment, the closing of each little door removes
the cheese into tbe next room, in this wav al
ways keeping it one room in advance of the rat
that seeks it—until the last room is reached (par
lor D) when it is swung noiselessly to the front
apartment for the allurement of another victim.
Once inside of a door, no rat can get ont, but
rats on the outside can get in, and do get in
until the trap is full.’
‘What s all that got to do with a savings bank?'
asked a receiving teller who was in the crowd.
‘Everything, my dear friend, everything,’ re
plied the strange man; ‘because, you see, when
the trap is full it dosts — liabilities large; assets
nothing.—Oil City Derrick
A sturdy vagabond, with full black beard of
unusual length, was recently brought before a
London magistrate, who questioned him about
his past life. ‘If one can believe all that is laid
to your charge, said the-judge, solemnly, ‘your
conscience must be as black as your beard. ’
Ah, replied the wily rogue, ‘if a man’s consci
ence is to be measured by his beard, then your
lordship has no conscience at all! ’
They have begun to post circus bills on the
gravestones out in the wilds of the West,
onoma the custom become general and reach
out its ai ms to embrace the oivilized world,
will find men, it death has not changed tuotr
disposition, mean enough to get up and demand
a complimentary ticket for tne privilege